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Wednesday

David Leon Talks About Making His Feature-Directoring Debut With 'Orthodox'

Stephen Graham as Benjamin

As an actor, David Leon has appeared in films including Oliver Stone's Alexander and Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla. His hard-hitting new film Orthodox, starring Stephen Graham as a boxing Orthodox Jew, marks his feature-directing debut.

Getting
people to open their wallets for a first feature is never easy, says
actor-turned filmmaker David Leon, whose provocative debut, Orthodox,
is playing in the UK Jewish Film Festival. “You know no one is
going to give you that opportunity on a silver plate. So you have to
find innovative and dynamic ways of working around the system."

He
started by making a short version, as “a kind of pilot”, to give
potential investors an idea of what the feature-length movie would
look and feel like. Also called Orthodox,
it starred Stephen Graham (This
is England,
Broadwalk
Empire)
as an Orthodox Jew called Benjamin who's alienated himself from his
community by becoming a boxer. The short was self-contained and
existed in its own right. However, by making the material part of the
longer version, Leon, who had gained experience in front of the
camera in movies such as Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla
and Oliver Stone's Alexander,
only needed to raise funding for a 70 minute, rather than a 90
minute, feature.

Whilst it was a clever
(and ultimately successful) strategy, getting a feature off the
ground was still difficult. The film's Orthodox Jewish backdrop could
be regarded as somewhat niche, but Leon always saw this as a
strength.

“It
was my intention that it would be niche,” he says. “I think when
you make a micro-budget film like this, you have a responsibility to
deal with subject matter that is niche, and probably in an
unconventional way, because it is the only thing that allows your
story to stand out, quite often."

Leon was born in
Newcastle Upon Tyne and is Jewish on his father's side. His religious
upbringing was “moderate”, with neither parent forcing their
different point of view on him. “As a consequence, it made me much
more inquisitive,” he says. “And as I grew older, I became more
intrigued by the conflicts that presented. And there certainly was
conflict when my mother and father got together.”

He
describes himself as “half Jewish”, an identification which is “a
very personal thing”, he says. He knows that to the Orthodox
community he is in no senses Jewish, and this informed some of the
feelings surrounding Benjamin's
situation in the film. A proud and dedicated family man, he longs to
be fully acccepted by his community, but the choices he has made in
his life – including marrying a secular woman who converted – and
his inability to meet the standards of observance demanded of him,
have landed him between worlds.

His troubles begin when
he defies his father and takes up boxing, following a violent
anti-Semitic attack. Leon witnessed such an assault on a Hassidic boy
by “secular kids” in Stamford Hill. The fact that it happened in
liberal, cosmopolitan London made it seem all the more “archaic and
barbaric”, he says.

“What
was interesting was that that boy was literally wearing his beliefs
on his sleeve. We all believe in various things but we don't all
dress in a way that projects that for the world to see, and that's an
incredibly brave thing. I wondered whether [the attack] would make
him more intent on his values, or whether it could make him question
them.”

That Benjamin's father
effectively cuts his son off for (reluctantly) pursuing boxing as a
response to his attack, seems extreme.

Leon, though, spent 18
months in Orthodox communities in Newcastle, Gateshead, and north
London doing background research for the short and feature, and says
he learned that “the idea of one man inflicting pain upon another
was frowned upon in the context of the Jewish faith.”

Stephen Graham (Right)

He found this fascinating. In the late 1800s/early 1900s, Jewish men used boxing
as way to escape from being part of an underclass, and to assimilate
and confront anti-Semitism. The sport turned them into heroes. But
times change and Saul's reaction has to be seen in the wider context
of the challenges now facing a community whose cultural cohesion,
Leon seems to be suggesting, is under threat from modernity.

“The
intention was never to make an observation on the religion,” he
explains. “It was much more about the culture.
And
not just about Jewish culture but about 21st
century culture and the demands that are placed on people within the
Orthodox Jewish community as a consequence.”

The
community is not monolithic but composed of individuals. And while
they may all live under the same umbrella of shared beliefs, “some
will believe in certain things more extremely than others”, says
Leon. “I think what that does, in this day and age where we have
access to information at the touch of a button, particularly to kids
and those that have less strength of character, or those that are
more inquisitive, is present a real conflict that I think the
Orthodox Jewish community has never had before.”

Benjamin
represents this as a character and, in some respects, in the choice
of actor playing him. Stephen Graham ties on Tefillin and wears a
kippah like he's been doing it all of his life, but he's not Jewish.
In fact the question of whether a Jew should play the role never came
up, says Leon.

“In
many ways the character is as much secular as he is Jewish, because
of the way he chooses to live his life. So there was something
interesting, as a film-maker, in taking somebody who is not Jewish
and introducing them to that world, because here is a man who to all
intents and purposes is not living his life as a Jewish man; he is
living his life as a kind of a halfway house.”

Benjamin's
predicament – inspired by someone Leon met – allows the film to
reveal some of the different sides of the community, which is
portrayed honestly, seemingly accurately, and without sentimentality.
It offers people love and security, but can be tough on those who
don't observe its practices.

“That
was my experience,” says Leon. “The
community can be a very safe environment and somewhere people feel
very close, and there was a real sense of people looking after one
another. But it's fair to say the demands placed on the individual
are very restrictive and very unrelenting. And I think if you don't
toe the line, you can be cast aside and ostracised.”

Many
do meet the demands, of course. For Leon, as a film-maker, however,
“those
who fall through the cracks and fall by the wayside” are more
interesting.

That
said, he stresses that he came away from the process of making
Orthodox
having encountered a “beautiful feeling of being willing to
forgive. There is an unremitting attitude towards forgiveness, and I
think that is something that the Jewish faith, particularly,
upholds.”

"Your piece is one of the most comprehensive, eloquent, and powerful discussions of the film I have read." Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing

"Stephen, this is a fabulous piece; you did a superlative job in communicating the film and its essence." Erik Greenberg Anjou, director of Deli Man

"I have to thank you. It's a very good [Mein Kampf] article, which you have written; it reflects very sharply and especially fairly the various positions." Dr. Christian Hartmann, Institute of Contemporary History Munich